


Harry's Life Sucks Balls

by askanasshole



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Crack, Fred is totes alive forever, Hermione Bashing, Humor, Pretty much everyone sucks but Harry, Probably Crack, Ron Bashing, as in harry is abused as a child, fuck yeah ignoring canon, what are you smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:46:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/askanasshole/pseuds/askanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry dies before sixth year, Voldemort is given the chance to rise again in our hero's body. He thought it would be easy but is anything easy for Harry Potter?</p><p>“So you see, Harry,” Dumbledore said, panting from pain. “If you get on that train, it’s entirely possible that Voldemort will gain control of your body. You’ll die and he’ll live.”</p><p>“Or it could not happen like that,” Voldemort said, eyes shifting shadily to the side. “Maybe we’ll both die.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry Potter Dies and is a Bit of a Gangster

CHAPTER 1: Harry Potter Dies and is a Bit of a Gangster

Harry Potter died two months after his godfather fell through the veil, two weeks before Professor Dumbledore was set to visit, two fortnights before his sixteenth birthday, and two minutes after he was struck by a car. His last thoughts, lying broken and bloody in the roadway was simply this:

_How incredibly mundane._

He then proceeded to stop breathing.

Harry had assumed upon his death a great number of things might occur. He thought his life might flash before his eyes. He thought he might see a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. He thought he might finally see his parents again. Harry Potter saw none of these things. Instead, he saw a great darkness and then, suddenly, a great light.

“Great buggering fuck!” said Harry Potter as his eyes melted from the intense brightness. It occurred to him that, as a dead person, he should not feel pain but was not overly bothered by the seeming lapse in logic. He had, after all, never died before so some discrepancies in his expectations were to be expected.

He, however, was not prepared to find himself in a very clean, very white version of King’s Cross Station. He was very certain that the afterlife was not an empty station, previous death experiences or no.

“Hello?” he called tentatively into the white fog swirling in front of him. He blinked against the light and tried to distinguish from which direction it was coming from. He was perturbed to find that there was no one direction at all.

“Harry Potter,” a grave voice intoned from the fog. Harry’s hand immediately flashed to his hip where he kept his wand. Luckily, being transported to this strange place didn’t seem to have mysteriously taken it and it was with some gratefulness that he seized it and pointed it in the direction he perceived the voice to have come from.

“Who’s there?” he demanded and then, belatedly, “Where am I?”

Silently, Professor Dumbledore emerged from the fog, smiling benignly. Reluctantly, Harry lowered his wand.

“Professor Dumbledore?” he asked, confused. “What are you doing here? Where is here?”

“That I can not tell you, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said calmly. “What does it look like?”

Harry swallowed nervously and changed his grip on the wand by his side. “King’s Cross station, sir.”

“Really?” Dumbledore asked, seemingly delighted. “How very interesting.”

He hummed a few bars from the Hogwart’s school song and continued to smile at Harry.

“Sir,” Harry tried again. “Where are we?”

“What do you remember, Harry?” Harry hated how Dumbledore never answered questions but he took care to hide his anger.

“I was in London,” he said slowly. “Shopping. Aunt Petunia was taking Dudley shopping. Couldn’t leave me in the house because Uncle Vernon was meeting a client there.” He paused, letting his mind work through the day. “We were walking. I was carrying the bags behind Aunt Petunia and Dudley was right behind me. I was ignoring him. Then he-” Harry broke off and choked with indignation. “That prat shoved me into the road!”

Harry remembered now- the cloudy skies, the gargantuan shopping bags, the little whale behind him. Dudley had been moaning about Harry coming with them so Harry had whinged back saying that he’d have less to carry if it didn’t require so much cloth to cover Dudley’s blubbery body. He’d been hot and irritable but, apparently, so had Dudley. He remembered he’d been hit by-

“A fucking Prius!” Harry exclaimed. “Bloody hell, seriously? Those things are too bloody quiet.”

“Indeed, dear boy,” Dumbledore agreed, eyes twinkling. “But that is the magic of German engineering.”

“What?” said Harry, dragged out of his indignation. “But the Prius isn’t-”

“Are you aware what happened next, Harry?” Dumbledore asked, twinkle gone from his eye. Harry thought hard.

“I...died.” Harry rocked back on his heels, not sure how to feel about that. He should be upset, right? He decided to think about that later. “Okay. So I’m dead. Wait, if you’re here does that mean you’re dead too?”

Dumbledore chuckled warmly. “No, my dear boy. This place is a projection of your mind, the next step so to speak after death. This is not King’s Cross and I’m not the Albus Dumbledore you were acquainted with-”

“Wait,” Harry interrupted, heart rate beginning to pick up. “You’re saying that you’re not the real Albus Dumbledore.”

“That’s correct, dear boy.”

“You’re a mental projection.”

“Of a kind.”  
“This is all taking place inside of my dead head.”

“Well...yes, I supposed. But I don’t understand what-”

“Petrificus Totalus!” 

Harry watched as Dumbledore abruptly stiffened like a board and began to teeter on the spot. Dumbledore’s eyes were wide open and flicking frantically from side to side. He was making little grunting sounds, obviously trying to speak.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Harry sighed, cracking his neck side to side. “That felt way better than I thought it would.” He walked casually over to Dumbledore who was looking at him with confused and frightened eyes. “You have been a fucking pain in my side for far too long, old man. I won’t let you ruin my death for me too.”

Dumbledore looked like he really wanted to say something but Harry was having none of it. He sneered down at his former headmaster.

“It was worth dying to get out from under your thumb.” He kicked the old man hard in the side once or twice for good measure and wandered away. He ignored Dumbledore’s diminishing muffled screams behind him.

Harry wondered if this was it for him. An empty station with a figment of his imagination lying spell bound next to the tracks. He shrugged to himself. It was better than life, he guessed.

“You’re going to regret that.”

Harry stopped in his tracks, spin automatically stiffening at the unwelcome voice. He relaxed as he remembered Dumbledore’s words. Everything here was a mental projection of his own making. He grimaced as he realized his mind had conjured Dumbledore.

“Did you hear me? I said you’re going to regret that.”

He’d had his back to the voice for a pretty long time, he realized. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He really hoped his after life wasn’t just filled with this. Harry decided it was probably just best to turn around and deal with the problem. He looked behind him, preparing to answer, only to stop short. There was no one there. Harry wondered if it was better to have voices or actual people.

“Down here, you idiot.”

Harry looked down. There was a waiting bench next to the tracks. Harry crouched down to look under it. Something stared back at him. Harry blinked. The thing blinked. Harry blinked again. He stood up and adjusted his glasses on his face.

“My mind is a fucked up place,” he observed casually to no one in particular. He wondered which psychological scar from his childhood could have created the disgusting old-man-baby-thing under the bench. Harry bet it was a repressed one of seeing Dudley naked.

“Don’t insult me,” the bloody (no really it was all bloody and shit) baby said. Harry watched as it used it’s creepily elongated arms to drag itself from under the bench. “I’m not a mental projection like Dumbledore.”

“That’s what a mental projection would say,” Harry retorted although he wasn’t sure that was necessarily true. The baby ignored him and propped itself up against one of the bench legs.

“He was supposed to be your guide,” the baby said, nodding in the general direction Harry had left the bound Dumbledore. Unfortunately, it’s head was too big for it’s body and it almost succeeded in knocking itself over from the sudden shift in weight. It regained it’s upright posture and sniffed as if to say it had done it on purpose.

“Guide for what?” Harry asked. “For the after life? It’s a train station. An empty one. Nothing really to figure out there. I expected death to be a little more fulfilling, honestly.”

“Is it really empty?” the not-a-mental-projection baby asked coyly. It’s red eyes glinted up at Harry, reminding him eerily of other red eyes he’d seen a few months before.

“How long’s Voldemort been in my head?” Harry asked the baby curiously because Harry Potter is not an idiot. He didn’t feel any of the revulsion he’d felt during the possession in the Ministry. Probably a side effect of him being dead, he decided. Probably for the best. He was so tired of being constantly freaked out and afraid.

The baby blinked in shock at being recognized but, before it could respond to the accusation, a train pulled into the station. Not just any train, Harry realized. The Hogwarts express.

“What’s the Hogwarts express doing here?” he asked Baby Voldemort as there was no one else to inquire this of. Baby Voldy sneered at him.

“I don’t know. That’s why I told you you’d regret ditching your guide.”

“No helping it then,” Harry sighed.

Ignoring Baby Voldy, Harry wandered through the fog back to the immobile Dumbledore. Interestingly enough, no matter how far away from the train he walked, the front kept pace with him. It was pretty trippy but Harry wasn’t in the mood to deal with the impossibility. He had questions and it was going to take a lot more than just asking them to get Dumbledore to talk.

Dumbledore was just where Harry had left him. He was silent now and his bright blue eyes were staring dully upwards. They blinked with shock as Harry’s face suddenly intruded in their line of vision.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Harry said darkly, twirling his wand in one hand. Dumbledore gazed at the spinning stick fearfully. “I’m going to take the spell off. You’re going to sit up. Not stand up. Sit up. You’re going to keep your hands flat on the floor where I can see them. I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to answer them. You’re not going to give me a riddle or a half-answer or, heaven forbid, another question. You are going to answer my questions directly and as efficiently as possible.” Harry moved to cancel the spell but stopped as another condition occurred to him. “And for every time you call me ‘dear boy’ or any variation of, I’m going to kick you hard and without remorse. Do you understand? Blink if you understand.”

Dumbledore’s eyes watered pathetically and, as he blinked slowly, a trail of tears cascaded down his face and caught in his long white hair. Harry did not even feel a little bad. Knowing the old goat, he was probably faking anyway.

“My dear boy,” Dumbledore began reproachfully after sitting up. “There’s no-”

Harry swiftly and mercilessly kicked Dumbledore in his lower stomach. The old man cried out and doubled over in an impressive display of flexibility for someone of his advanced age.

“What did I say?” Harry asked fiercely. Dumbledore keened quietly. Harry reached down and jerked his head up with one hand, shoving his wand in the other up to Dumbledore’s red face. “What did I say, old man?”

“Not to call you ‘dear boy’, dear-,” Dumbledore’s eyes widened and he hastily corrected himself, “Harry.”

Harry nodded, satisfied, and let go of Dumbeldore. “Good to know you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Harry said, standing back up so he could tower threateningly over Dumbledore. “Now. Why’s there a train here?”

Dumbledore blinked confused. “A train?” His eyes began to sparkle. “Fascinating! I- wait, wait, wait!” Dumbledore cried as Harry drew back his foot to deliver another vicious kick for answering a question with a question. “It means you have a choice! You must not be quite dead yet. If you stay here, you’ll be sent back to your body and you’ll live.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully and tapped his wand against his lips. “What happens if I get on the train?”

“I don’t know- wait, I really don’t know! You’ll move onto the afterlife, whatever that may be,” Dumbledore concluded fearfully.

“What’s the average velocity of an unladen swallow?” Harry demanded. He cocked his foot back in preparation.

“What? I don’t understand-”

Kick.

“What’s the average velocity of an unladen swallow?”

“Please, my dear boy, I don’t-”

Kick.

“Aaah!”

Kick.

“Why did you kick me that time?” Dumbledore asked weakly, holding a hand to his batter jaw.

“I ask the questions here,” Harry snarled and kicked Dumbledore in the side with his toes.

“Kick him again, kick him again!” Baby Voldy cheered. Harry turned his back on Dumbledore who was curled up in a fetal position to regard the disgusting thing incredulously.

“How the hell did you get over here?” he asked. He looked at the ground behind the baby and was horrified to see blood marking the path it’s dragged itself along. It ruined the whole angelic, white vibe the station had had before. “Well that’s fucking disturbing,” Harry said.

“My god,” Dumbledore gasped, staring wide eyed at the Voldy-bomination. “You aren’t supposed to be able to talk. Harry, that’s-”

“Kick him again,” Baby Voldy encouraged Harry, smiling maliciously.

“Harry listen to me!” Dumbledore implored, turning bright eyes on the boy-who-lived. “That isn’t a projection it’s-”

“Voldemort,” Harry finished, cocking one eyebrow. “Yeah, I know.”

“No,” Dumbledore shuddered. “It’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul!”

“A piece of-” Harry began to repeat but stopped. He narrowed his eyes at the earnest Headmaster and then again at the carefully nonchalant baby Dark Lord. He crouched down in front of the broken Dumbledore. “Explain.”

“Harry,” Dumbledore pleaded. “You must not die. You must continue-”

Dumbledore broke off as Harry’s green eyes seemed to turn black. He began to crack each knuckle of his hand slowly.

“No, headmaster-”

Crack. Crack. Crack

“-I think you’d better-”

Crack. Crack. Crack.

“Explain.”

And that’s how Harry learned all about Horcruxes and what the Dark Lord did to obtain immortality.

“So you see, Harry,” Dumbledore said, panting from pain. “If you get on that train, it’s entirely possible that Voldemort will gain control of your body. You’ll die and he’ll live.”

“Or it could not happen like that,” Voldemort said, eyes shifting shadily to the side. “Maybe we’ll both die.”

“Yeah,” Harry said slowly, grimacing as he stood up. “Okay. So Voldemort split up his soul so if one part died, it’d just join up with other parts rather than moving on. He can’t die unless all the pieces are together, yes?”

“I get more powerful as my soul comes back together,” Baby Voldy boasted.

“Shut up,” said Harry. “I’m not talking to you.”  He turned back to Dumbledore who’d accumulated several more bruises since his explanation had began. “And I can’t kill that thing here because I’m dead?”

“Souls can’t kill other souls,” Dumbledore agreed. He wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

“That’s what this whole sacrificing me thing has been about? Because I’m a horcrux?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore whispered. “For the greater good.”

“If you were the real Dumbledore,” Harry said dispassionately, looking down at the broken man, “I would gut you and strangle you with your own intestines.” Dumbledore began to cry silently. “As for you,” Harry said, whirling on Baby Voldy. Baby Voldy cringed as if expecting a blow. He wondered if the pesky boy would go back to living thus sending him back into the catatonic state he’d been in before. “I don’t even give a fuck. Do whatever the fuck you want.” With that, Harry turned his back on both mental projection and dark lord to board the train.

“Wait, Harry!” Dumbledore struggled into a sitting position and looked at him disbelievingly. “Everyone you love will be in danger if you die! He’ll take over your body.”

“Don’t give a fuck.” He stepped up onto the stairs leading into the front carriage.

“Not that I should complain,” Baby Voldy said, confused. “But don’t you want to live?”

Harry paused and threw a humorless smile over his shoulder. “My life sucks balls,” he said. As he climbed the final step into the train, it disappeared and Voldemort was thrust into a world filled with pain.


	2. Tom Riddle Gets Acquainted with Balls

Tom Riddle groaned on the cold sidewalk of London. He was cold and wet and sore. And, he realized with dread, his right arm was very, very broken. Foggy from pain, he directed his magic to heal, starting with his head which, for some reason, felt like a cracked egg. 

“He’s fine!” A shrill voice insisted over him. “No need to call an ambulance!”

“Ma’am,” a hysterical voice said, “Ma’am, I hit him with my car.”

“He’s fine, we’ll just take him home-”

“There’s so much blood!”

“-just a scratch-”

“I think I can see brain tissue!”

“Oh god,” Tom said, sitting up slowly and doing his best not to vomit. “Please shut up.”

A stunned pause and then the shrill voice snapped “See? He’s fine. We won’t press charges if you just leave now.”

There was some shuffling and Tom could make out through his blurry vision that the hysterical voice, probably the owner of the Prius, was hurrying away. After a second of blinking dully into the dim light of the day, Tom felt a shoe nudge him in the back.

“Get up,” a female voice snapped. “Why I thought I could take you anywhere-”

Tom looked up, eyesight finally clear, and suddenly wished he had not. A long, horsey looking face was sneering down at him and the owner, a rather thin, severe looking woman, was shouting, worsening his concussion. He jerked his head away from her and had the misfortune to catch sight of a bulbous pile of human flesh. He flinched back as two, small dots, dots which he had assumed to be rubbish, blinked at him.

“Oh god, you’re a person,” he told the blob with some horror. A line across the blob’s face turned down and Tom realized that it was frowning. He fought the urge to retch.

“Of course he’s a person,” the woman snapped. Harry’s memories swam fuzzily to the surface as the last of the brain damage was healed, providing Tom with a name. Aunt Petunia was a bit red in the face from shouting and the color certainly did not do anything to improve her looks. “You idiot.”

“I hardly think I’m the idiot,” Tom sneered, climbing to his feet. He took a moment to examine a memory of Harry delivering a particular cutting response to one of the blob’s - Dudley’s- threats to dunking his head in the toilet. He hoped Dudley had grown to be more intelligent in the interim years.

“Idiot,” Dudley parroted and Tom lost a little faith in humanity. Then he remembered that Dudley was a muggle and therefore inferior and he felt infinitely better about himself.

“Look at this mess!” Aunt Petunia cried, gesturing to the sidewalk and street where several sheets of fabric were sprawled out. They were not tents, as Tom had presumed upon first glance, but rather shirts. 

“You better hope nothing is damaged, boy!” Aunt Petunia continued. She crossed her bony arms over her chest and glared at him. “What are you waiting for? Pick them up! Hurry!”

“I...I was just hit by a _car_ ,” Tom said with some disbelief. “I need to go to a _hospital_.” 

“You need to get my Dudder’s clothing,” Aunt Petunia said, sending a fond look to the blob. She turned her harsh gaze back to him. “Get to it or there’ll be no dinner for you.”

“You’re not very _bright_ are you?” Tom asked.

Aunt Petunia slapped him, hard. Dudley roared with laughter. Tom froze.

He, as he saw it, had several options at that moment. Fifteen to be exact. Six were ridiculous so he discarded them immediately. Four were redundant as they were all variations of “kill this horse-faced bitch” so he also disposed of those. That left him with five courses of action.

One, kill this horse-faced bitch. Just fucking kill her.

Two, punch this horse-faced bitch in the face and skin her child to make a hot air balloon to fly away in. He’d almost discarded that as ridiculous until he remembered that, as a wizard, he could actually do that.

Three, crucio them both to the point of insanity and continue on with his life as Saviour of the Wizarding World while denying the whole ordeal.

Four, walk away and come back to this issue later when he had a clearer idea of how he’d like to progress with this opportunity.

Five, do what the unfortunate looking woman said. Assimilate into Harry’s life, learning all his and the light side’s secrets before ultimately joining with his remaining soul pieces and conquering the world. Poison the horse-faced bitch at earliest convenience.

Tom, seething with rage, slowly turned to look Aunt Petunia in the eye.

“Pick them up,” Aunt Petunia hissed, ignoring the pure murder in her nephew’s eyes.

Voldemort smiled sweetly. “Of course, Aunt Petunia.”

He picked up the clothes and shoved them back into the bags haphazardly, smiling grotesquely. Once done, he stood with the bags in front of the woman, head-cocked innocently to the side. Aunt Petunia sniffed.

“Come on, Dudders,” she said. “Time to go home.” She turned and strode down the sidewalk, not bothering to spare Tom another glance. Tom’s jaw tightened in anger and he had to imagine burning the vile woman alive for several moments to prevent any accidental, magical lashing out.

“Idiot,” Dudley blurted into Tom’s face. Tom’s face contorted into an expression of disgust as the whale’s vile breath registered.

“I’m going to kill you and your entire family,” Tom said in a tone of quiet revelation.

“What?” Dudley said thickly, turning to look at his cousin.

“Nothing,” Tom said, smiling with Harry’s face.

Dudley grunted and waddled after his mother, not bothering to look back to see the way Tom was stalking behind him.

Tom did not speak for the entirety of the car ride back to the Dursley’s home, despite the woman’s attempt to lecture him and the boy’s attempts to physically fight him in the back seat.

Tom considered fighting Dudley physically, and had to laugh at the notion. Of course he would just use magic to kill the medium-sized whale. He was a wizard, not a peasant.

Dudley shoved a surprisingly bony elbow between his ribs, causing Tom to hiss in sudden pain.

Wiz-ard, he forcefully reminded himself. Not. A. Filthy. Muggle.

Tom wondered if maybe Harry had punched Dudley before. Surely the Savior of the Wizarding World was allowed a cheap shot or two. He really needed to find a spare moment to look through all of Harry’s memories. He was sure it would be pretty entertaining.

The Dursley home, when they finally arrived an aching ear and three sore ribs later, was just as terrible as Tom had imagined it. Worse perhaps.

For one, it was _quaint_.

Every house on the street was exactly the same, down to the shiny cars in the driveways and the concrete paths leading to the doors. It was like muggles had no sense of originality. No wonder they were so dull.

Tom got out of the car before Dudley could bury him in blubber and rolled his shoulders back. He’d had a good brain storming session while in the car and had firmly decided on his course of action. He would act like Potter, do all the things Potter normally did, and wait. When the opportunity presented itself, he would flee the dratted light side and join up with his older counter part.

Imagine, two Voldemorts, ruling side by side, all powerful as the world knelt by their feet. He was getting chills just thinking about it. Powerful chills. Sexy chills.

Not in that way. Gross.

But, before he could make that a reality, he had to pretend to be the Saviour of the Wizarding World. He could do it. He was rea-

“What are you waiting for,” Aunt Petunia snapped. “Unload the car! Quickly!”

-dy to unload the car. Tom felt a faint curl of disgust as he did as he was told. Potter was more of a spineless wizard than he had anticipated. He wondered if the courage he’d seen in the train station had come simply from the knowledge he was dead or if his hatred of Dumbledore had given him more spine than he normally had.

Either way, it was clear Potter was a worm that wouldn’t have dared to dream that he would defeat Lord Voldemort a second time.

Tom felt that being Potter was going to be annoying but incredibly dull and easy.

It was with that smug sense of superiority that he dropped the bags in the front entry hall and strolled past them into the living room. Easy peasy. He flopped down onto the couch, content to wait it out until Hogwarts.

A shriek from behind him caused him to leap up, hand grasping for a wand that wasn’t there.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” Aunt Petunia shrieked. Tom looked over his shoulder, hoping to see what had alarmed the woman so. Perhaps it was the picture of the pink beach ball on the mantle. It looked to be made of human skin.

Tom jerked in surprise as pain suddenly erupted on the side of his head. He turned as much as he could and gaped to find that Aunt Petunia had apparently apparated over the couch to grasp his ear between two bony fingers.

“Let go!” Tom commanded, voice breaking and ruining the authority he was going for.

“Look at the mess you’ve made!” Aunt Petunia screamed. She pulled Tom through to the foyer and yanked his face down to the floor, pointing. Tom looked.

“Your choice in carpeting is horrendous,” he noted without really thinking. A sharp tug on his ear let him know he wasn’t playing at being Potter very well.

“Dirt!” Petunia exclaimed. “Dirt all over my clean carpets!”

“That’s no way to talk about yourself,” Tom snarked. He reached up and tried to rip the offending hand away from his ear. He didn’t mind losing it. It wasn’t even his ear. It was Potter’s.

Despite it being Potter’s ear, it was Tom who felt it when the vile woman twisted it. Tom whimpered in a way unbefitting of a dark lord.

“If I wasn’t having company over,” Aunt Petunia seethed, “I’d have you clean, you filthy freak!” She began to drag Tom up the stairs, preventing him from protesting the slur. “No dinner tonight, you’ll stay in your room, do you hear me? And tomorrow you can expect to be worked to the bone! The bone!”

Tom was beginning to doubt that this woman was Potter’s aunt. Perhaps she was the muggle version of a dark lord? She certainly didn’t seem to care whether Potter kept his ear either.

Ugh, a muggle dark lord? How pathetically distasteful.

Just when Tom was debating ripping the appendage off to get away from her claw like grip, he found himself stumbling into a room. He turned furiously, ear burning from abuse, to give the woman a piece of his mind only to have the door shut loudly in his face. A series of metallic clicks came then as the numerous locks on the door were shut from the outside.

Tom stood in the center of the barren room, mouth agape.

Maybe...he’d been discovered? Could the woman know he was not her beloved nephew and had locked him up to call the Order?

It was the only solution to this vile treatment.

Tom snapped his mouth shut. If that was the case, he had only one option.

Escape.

He turned majestically to the window, noting the owl sleeping in the cage in the corner, ready to fling himself out of it and make his way to civilization. He stopped. Blinked. Reached out tentatively.

Bars. Bars on the window. He grit his teeth. How could a muggle have anticipated him so thoroughly? It was an outrage!

No one must know. Which meant he’d need to hold off trying to connect to his followers until he could get out of this situation. He nodded to himself. Right.

Potter, he figured, must have a wand secreted somewhere. He was a wizard. A piss poor, weak-willed wizard from what he could tell but a wizard nonetheless.

Tom Riddle began molesting Harry Potter’s body. Extensively.

At the end of the fruitless search, Tom had discovered no wand but had found several of the Wizard Savior’s erogenous zones. He was thoroughly annoyed with these blasted teenage hormones, that was for sure.

With a huff, Tom plonked down on the shoddy cot lining one wall of the small room. Potter was a shitty enough wizard that he didn’t carry a wand on him at all times, so it was time to go on to plan two.

Wait for the Order to come, knock out their front guard and take their wand. Ugh, Tom hated waiting. He flopped back onto cot and stared at the ceiling.

One mississippi.

Two mississippi.

Three mississippi.

Four mississ-

ENOUGH, Tom ordered his mind, shutting his eyes tightly. He popped them open a moment later. He did have one task he’d forgotten about in the melodrama of being found out by a muggle and locked in the world’s tiniest, shittiest room.

Potter’s memories. Tom grinned darkly and rubbed his hands together which looked quite odd considering he was flat on his back. It was time to see what secrets lay in the boy wonder’s mind.

Tom settled back and took several calming breaths. His face went slack as did the rest of his body as he fell into a meditative state, only twitching every once in a while.

He stayed that way for a long time.

Many hours later- after the sun had gone done and the noises from the rest of the house had quieted before falling completely silent- Tom opened his eyes slowly. He blinked at the dark ceiling before sitting up as an old man would. He shifted so he was sitting on the edge of the bed and sat there, staring at Potter’s hands.

He knew now that the scar near Potter’s left finger was from burning his hand on the stove when he was six and the one on his thumb was from a giant chess game when he was elven.

He knew a lot about Harry Potter’s life now. Far too much, he might even say.

“Potter’s life sucks balls,” Tom Riddle said in faint awe. From the corner, the owl hooted faintly in agreement.

 


End file.
